


It Shall Be Painful, You'll See

by LarkThePerson



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dissociation, Flashbacks, Gen, Hospitals, M/M, Major Character Injury, could be read as gen or not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 01:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13377447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LarkThePerson/pseuds/LarkThePerson
Summary: “You know, he can’t be sedated.” She tells him with no preamble. It’s not a question. She knows that Bucky knows. He can’t really sedate him either.Bucky grunts a non-committal sound beside her. They don’t look at each other.“When you shot him, I stayed in the room and held his hand while they dug the bullets out.”





	It Shall Be Painful, You'll See

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Die in a Fire by The Living Tombstone.
> 
> This could be read as part of my "get us in some trouble" series but it wasn't written with that intention. Also could be read as gen or not, interpret as you will.

They’re sitting in the hospital together. Natasha with her shoulders tight and her back painfully straight. Bucky beside her slouched slightly, arms loose, but legs planted firmly on the linoleum, he tracks everything around them carefully. They wait.

Its hours later when they finally speak. Natasha left briefly to get them shitty coffee and wipe blood off her hands. But now they’re sitting, silent at four in the morning in the hospital, waiting, again.

“You know, he can’t be sedated.” She tells him with no preamble. It’s not a question. She knows that Bucky knows. He can’t really sedate him either.

Bucky grunts a non-committal sound beside her. They don’t look at each other.

“When you shot him, I stayed in the room and held his hand while they dug the bullets out.” 

Simple, a matter of fact.

Bucky takes a huge shuddering breath in like he hadn’t been breathing at all.

“If you ever make me do that again James. I will not hesitate.” She tells him, staring at him until he looks over. He feels his jaw is twitching. She doesn't articulate the threat. She doesn't have to. 

He nods.

“If I ever lose it again-” he stops, hoarse, voice giving out, “put me down. Shoot me in the fucking head.” He tells her. His voice is thin as wind through dry reeds.

She nods at him.

“Steve will never forgive me.” She tells him and her voice is deceptively soft.

Bucky looks at her. He knows Natasha can read through his vacant look. He doesn’t say Steve will be alive to be angry but she knows that’s what he’s telling her.

He looks away and they’re silent for a little while longer. Then, without a word, Natasha puts out her hand and Bucky takes it without looking over. His shoulders bunch when they touch and she doesn’t comment on it. 

They sit like that for another hour until Bucky looks at their joined hands. There he sees Natasha’s perfect nails. No blood in her cuticles or in the creases between her skin and nail. He stares at them for a long moment. Her fingers look like they’ve never touched blood, despite the gore he’s seen her covered in sometimes. From head to toe once or twice. She always cleans up so well. He on the other hand can never quite clean away the blood. Looking at his hands now he can see the blood in the whorls of his fingers. He looks away. He never needed to know how to be clean the way Natasha did. He just killed people. Natasha seduced her targets, body and soul before killing them. Then had to be clean enough to do it again.

She squeezes his hand. The doctor is walking down the hall.

Steve stayed unconscious for most of it and the whole surgery passed almost entirely without incident the doctor tell them. Bucky feels no relief.

“You can come back now,” is the most important part of what the doctor tells them. He wants to rush over to the room immediately, but he can’t find it in himself to move. 

“Come on,” Natasha says eventually, gently pushing him along.

When he finally gets moving its like he’s come completely unstuck. Time becomes slippery. He’s standing in a private waiting room one moment, then he’s in the room where Steve is laying, eyes closed.

“Steve-” he wants to make a snappy comment about how he knows Steve is awake, to stop pretending, but he can’t get anything else out.

Steve opens his eyes. He doesn’t speak. He opens his mouth and closes again.

Natasha walks up and rests her hand on the bed. Steve grabs for it immediately, squeezes hard until his knuckles are white. 

“You’re going to make it.” She tells him. Her tone is half joking. It was never really a question that he would make it. That’s what Bucky tells himself.

He notices the shine of sweat on Steve’s face.

Bucky finds himself close to Steve’s bed. He reaches out, touches Steve’s forehead, “Your gonna be ok buddy.” Bucky tells him.

Steve nods, jerky, and the movement makes Bucky notice the tendons popping in his neck. His jaw is tightly clenched.

Bucky doesn’t know how Natasha made it through a whole surgery of this. Bucky knows intimately just how much pain Steve is in right now and he can hardly stand it. It’s a struggle to stay present in the hospital room with Steve. He can feel himself slipping. Steve slipping too apparently. He slides out of consciousness. Bucky loses his grip on reality after. He glosses out of reality and just floats. He’s not the Winter Soldier or Bucky he’s just… not. 

Natasha pushes a chair towards him. The gesture is so normal it grounds him just a bit.  
He sits there all morning. He doesn’t manage to slip back into reality until Steve jolts sluggishly back into consciousness. He’s still clearly in agony. His body becomes whipcord taut in consciousness. But not for long. Eventually, he relaxes into it. It’s something Bucky remembers suddenly and vividly from their youth. The days Steve would come home, in pain, and eventually just flop, boneless, into their bed. Bucky had once assumed that because he was relaxed the pain had stopped. Steve had corrected him. He was still in pain. Steve had described it as floating on the pain. Bucky can remember his face so clearly in that moment. The light from their shitty lamp on his face, his squint as he tried to make out Bucky’s face in the dark with his bad eyes.

Bucky still doesn’t get that strategy. He just kind of mentally walks out the front door of his own body until the pain is gone. It seems to serve him better than Steve’s strategy. He can still function and get things done. Steve mostly just lays in bed, looking a little stoned.

“Hey,” Bucky whispers to Steve

“Hey,” Steve whispers back; his voice is wrecked. 

“You idiot.” Bucky says, he’s surprised by how quiet he sounds. 

Steve turns his head to the side; his eyes aren’t focusing properly but he smiles at Bucky and Bucky feels lighter.

He looks at Natasha, sitting in the corner of the room watching him intently. He wants to tell her again, kill me if I ever do this to Steve again. 

She nods like she understands him anyway.

“Love you, Buck.” Steve says, he’s got that stoned look on his face Bucky remembers from their childhood.

Bucky knows that Steve will be completely healed by the end of the week but just the idea of Steve in pain for so many more hours is unbearable. It’s unbearable right now. Bucky feels alight with tenderness and pain. Like he’s hurting with Steve. 

“Love you too, Stevie.” He says before leaning over to kiss his forehead.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments give me life!


End file.
